World Super League

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Imagine for a moment that Lionel Messi was leaving Barcelona, and he really wanted to join your team. Imagine budget wasn’t an issue (stay with me), but that he was a totally wrong fit for your team’s style of play. Would you still sign him?

Wherever you look in Europe, there are newly-promoted teams who are impressing in the highest division. In England, Wolves already look set to challenge for a top-half finish. The Austrian Bundesliga has been lit up by TSV Hartberg’s enterprising approach in their first-ever top-flight season. And in Norway, Ranheim are sixth having been as high […]

One of the major narratives of the 2018/19 European football season is the mixed results of the continent’s superclubs: Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Real Madrid. After a decade of dominance in the Champions League, none of the three are favourites for the competition, and they have collectively amassed 1.8 points per game domestically, 25% down […]

All clubs recognise that football is a results industry, but many would also say that providing entertainment is more important than it has ever been. Clubs and leagues’ competition is no longer just other teams or even sports, it’s often TV box sets and video games.

Football, like any other industry, is subject to the laws of supply and demand. Just as Ibiza’s popularity as a holiday destination pushes up the price of a drink on the island, the transfer fees required to acquire footballers is related not just to the quality of players in that market, but how many clubs […]

Arsène Wenger’s postmortem had already been written years before he actually announced his departure from Arsenal. As the conventional wisdom goes, he had an excellent first 8 seasons, winning 3 league titles, but then lost his way and was never again able to make Arsenal credible contenders for the league title.

With unprecedented levels of inequality in football, a clear hierarchy of both clubs and leagues has been established. While between 1986 and 1988 clubs from Romania, Sweden, Scotland and Belgium were represented in European finals alongside clubs from the continent’s bigger countries, between 2016 and 2018 pretty much all spots have been reserved for teams […]

One of the things that makes sport different to other industries is a sporting organisation’s dependency on a relatively small number of individuals. In the UK for example, a large ‘normal’ business generating £200m+ in turnover will employ over 1,500 people on average. A Premier League club with the same income might have a workforce […]